For the first time in the history of the social network, the number of people using Facebook on a daily basis is falling. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the platform had one million fewer visitors and the share of parent company Meta is now plunged by 20 percent.
Facebook usage is falling
Fewer and fewer users are scrolling through their Facebook timeline. For the first time, Facebook sees the number of daily active users decrease, Meta reports in a finacial report. The figures are for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter.
One million less sounds like a big number, but not when you consider that Instagram and WhatsApp, for example, have gained 10 million daily users in the same period. And yet, Facebook’s decline is a striking trend precisely because it’s happening for the first time.
worth 177 billion less
Facebook has been the subject of many scandals in recent years. Consider, for example, the still recent revelations about the fight against fake news and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook has paid billions in fines for this, but has never seen its user numbers structurally decrease.
This news, coupled with disappointing financial results, sends Meta’s stock plunge 20 percent. This also means that the company has lost 177 billion euros of its market value in one fell swoop. In a financial report, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to want to shift the focus from his social networks towards Oculus, the industry that develops virtual reality (VR) headsets. Only the Oculus branch in 2021 caused a loss of 9 billion euros and a turnover of 2 billion. That is nothing compared to the contribution of the social networks of Meta, which in a year bring in 35 billion euros thanks to advertising revenues.
Rescue from the metaverse?
If the decline in the number of Facebook users becomes a permanent trend, then Meta will have to count on a growth of Instagram and WhatsApp in the first place. The company also has plans to bet on the so-called ‘metaverse’, or virtual worlds that you can discover with a VR headset. However, that project is still in its infancy.
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– Thanks for information from Androidworld. Source